FADE IN:
EXT. Glorious, sunlit Paris. Wide tracking shots of iconic monuments like the Eiffel Tower and Louvre are thrown in to help even the most clueless chumps in the audience figure out the place. The city is ruthlessly manicured. Chic, lithe, young bodies are scattered artfully to show you how far Bollywood has come since its over-cluttered, crawling-with-sanskaari-babujis 90s set days.
Free-spirited bohemian chick VAANI is out about town looking free-spirited and Bohemian. Indian dude RANVEER, also free-spirited but not as much, unerringly finds his way to her, like Indians are wont to when they are abroad.
RANVEER
(bounding over madly, tongue nearly hanging out)
My Indian herding instinct brought me to you, but now I also see how hot you are. What is this, some rom-com meet-cute?
RANVEER turns and winks at the camera. The 4th wall is broken. Somewhere, ADITYA CHOPRA high fives himself.
VAANI
Holy shit, dude. A simple hello to a stranger does not warrant so much energy. But you are cute and I am bored and also free-spirited and quirky so now we will have sex without exchanging names.
They do.
INT. Morning after. Glorious, sunlit bedroom.
VAANI is preparing to saunter away into the day when RANVEER wakes up to harass her with his gentlemanliness.
RANVEER
Wow. That was some really great not-fade-to-black action. Do you think Pahlaj Nihalani survived that?
VAANI
He might have fainted a bit, but he is a tough old bird. Don’t worry, we have the rest of the movie to properly take care of him.
RANVEER
So when do you think we should meet again to do this and then fall in love and marry and make babies?
VAANI
I am too quirky and carefree to want what women in traditional romances want. This was strictly a one-time thing.
RANVEER
But bebbe, I am like Lays – no one can eat just one. Um, no, hang on, that doesn’t work. No one can have just one? No one can eat only – ?
VAANI
Boy, bye.
VAANI leaves but what she does not know is that RANVEER went to the Ae Dil Hai Mushkil school of male entitlement, where a ‘no’ can mean lots of very agreeable things.
EXT. Glorious, sunlit park.
RANVEER finds VAANI and ‘adorably’ hounds her for a date until she tells him to slap a cop to earn it. He does. The audience is supposed to see this as a cool, daring act. He wins the date and is also somehow not locked up on a felony charge.
VAANI
So now we will go on the kind of befikre adventure that the middle-class audience watching us can only dream of. Only one condition. Don’t get senti on me. That is so uncool and un-quirky and un-free-spirited.
RANVEER
Done, done, done
VAANI and RANVEER, accompanied by music that forces your heart to thump louder in a sad facsimile of excitement, proceed to loot and pillage Paris while looking glamorous so you feel it’s ok.
VAANI
Wear this tiny, red underwear to a formal venue.
RANVEER
Cool beans.
He does but he is all glistening flesh and rippling muscle so the dare is really an excuse to show off, which we are okay with.
RANVEER
Do a striptease in this library.
VAANI
You are on.
She does. That night, around the city, several assignment and thesis deadlines are missed and the library loses 50 percent of its patrons
RANVEER and VAANI continue to perform obnoxious acts of nuisance in public places and make furious love without contracting STDs until RANVEER catches feelings.
RANVEER
Uh-oh
VAANI
I am donzo with you, dude
RANVEER
Underneath this befikre exterior, I am still an Indian boy and so what I really want is true love I can take home to mummy. You as a woman also desire ishq-wala-love but something traumatic is keeping you from realising it.
VAANI
(tearing up)
You are right, RANVEER. My lifestyle can only be an aberration that is good fun for a while but ultimately needs fixing. These can’t be the thought-out choices of an empowered, independent woman. Here is the traumatic thing that happened that you cured me of.
RANVEER
(taking her in his arms)
My poor darling. Now, we will come to some sort of compromise between forever-productive-monogamy and reckless-dangerous-fun so that all demographics are pleased.
They do.
THE END.
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